Echo
by BigBoss3
Summary: Magda was called there, through dreams, and taken there against her will. In the heart of Romania, the Keep summoned those chosen for a great battle, and to teach them of terror and magic and love. Based on the WWII Horror/Fantasy Novel by F. Paul Wilson, and film by Michael Mann.
1. Chapter 1

_The Keep, a 1983 film directed by Michael Mann, is a totally hidden gem that'll never see a Blu-Ray or even a DVD release. It's perfect, my favorite film. In any case, I hope that at least having one story on here will spur some interest and lead to even more fanfic bliss, so please check The Keep out on YouTube or you know, download it. Enjoy!_

* * *

Once upon a time, it was nothing more than an ancient mystery, shrouded in myth and legend and rumor, all easily disputable by anyone with knowledge of the structure.

And the village that had bore roots into the infertile rock across the causeway had been a peaceful, if not dreary, settlement. Simple people leading simple lives beneath the daunting shadows of granite peaks, in a land just barely touched by the searing war.

The Keep was more now. Physically, the same that it had always been; unnaturally untouched by age, a fortress with meaningless rooms and staircases and subterranean caverns that went on and on into darkness.

But the change was not something so much she could see, but _feel._

She felt it in every step she took and sound heard, and in the faces of the soldiers that had spent the last week occupying the Keep. They were not the arrogant, violent men who'd come for her father in the ghetto, dressed head to toe in menacing black.

They were frightened.

Not in all the years that her father spent ceaselessly studying the Keep had any tales of gruesome death within it's stone walls come to light. It was just _there,_ as if it were as natural a formation as the mountains that it'd been chiseled into.

 _Now...now there were forces of good and evil and even neutrality flocking to it, for reasons Magda couldn't fathom._

She tried to make sense of it, as she sat near her sickly, pale father; as he toiled over the wretched books that had been found in a strange little room, hidden in the Keep. Searching for an answer to satisfy the ruthless Sturmbannführer, and his significantly more humble counterpart, the Wehrmacht captain.

 _"Find out what is killing us..."_

Magda shivered, hugged herself, kept her eyes on her father and refused to let her gaze linger on the benign granite that now held malice, or the empty glass of water that he would soon ask her to refill.

And she would do so without argument, like anything he asked her to do; braving the rest of the structure that now crawled with soldiers and Nazis, all who stared at her with ravenous eyes.

She would do these things that frightened her so, but for the moment, Magda was safe to simply sit and rest and haphazardly look through the weathered books.

 _"...I may be able to get you to Bucharest, and keep you safe."_

"Magda, why don't you go on down to the mess and get us something to eat?" Rasped Theodore Cuza.

"We...just ate, Papa," She replied quietly, terror sweeping through her cold body. It would be the sixth time he'd sent her away for something that evening alone.

 _Don't make me go, Papa, please don't, please..._

"I'm famished, I won't even be able to _read_ soon."

* * *

Strong hands restrained her from the back, digging into muscle and bruising flesh, as another pair tried to hold up her legs and unclothe her in concert. Pain unlike anything Magda had known radiated from her stomach, where one of the men had hit her with appalling strength.

 _Men dressed head to toe in black._

She struggled with vigor at first, against the claws that pulled and ripped at her blouse, her skirt, the sweaty palm clapped against her mouth. In the haze of adrenaline, she heard them hissing at each other in German. She weakened, limbs failing her.

Malicious cold seeped into the corridor, surrounded the three figures bucking in the dark; a low rumbling neared.

 _A hand had reached her undergarments; whispers of victory between comrades._

Magda wept, and through tears that blurred, imagined a dark figure near the end of the corridor cloaked in billowing fog, taking long, quick strides towards them. It almost seemed to _glide_ along the stygian floor. Each lamp that it passed, strung to the walls by the Wehrmacht, dimmed and died in it's wake.

Red eyes in the mist was the last thing the girl saw before everything went dark; but she was aware of being dropped on the stone, of horrible screams of death.

 _Being lifted and held against something solid and cold. She did not open her eyes._

The low rumble persisted, surrounded her as she was carried in an unknown direction, by some phantom of her mind.

 _Her mind. It wasn't real...so evil..._

Evil fell from it in icy waves, drowning her in crippling fear. The men who'd attacked had been just that... _men._

Magda shivered and swallowed a cry, gooseflesh rising across her bare chest and frail arms.

The hold on her shifted, and movement stopped. With all her might, she feigned ignorance. But warm breath misted her face, and a whimper left her trembling lips.

"I won't hurt you."

Lashes fluttered open and she saw...

 _Saw a figure looming over her, staring down with glowing eyes. Cloudy outlines of a shapely jaw and proud nose, slack lips, and dark, wild hair that fell on a brow._

"Magda, Magda..." The Phantom cooed in spurious gentility. Long fingers traced along her collarbone, her cheek, through her curls. The girl's body hurt with the need to get as far away from it as possible, to be free and clean and out of it's blackened reach.

"What _are_ you doing here, I wonder? What role...?" It whispered thoughtfully, cloak of fog swirling faster, growing darker. Magda could only gaze up with an expression of unbound horror and confusion, waiting to be killed.

For surely, she had found what had been murdering the soldiers.

"You'd be better to fear them more than I."


	2. Chapter 2

_"You'd be better to fear them more than I."_

"You are the same." Her voice was soft and dry, uttered from parched lips. Magda shivered, and opened her eyes; a silent prayer that the thing from her nightmare was gone.

She was in the room that the soldiers had quartered them in.

 _Alone?_

Sprawled across a scratchy, military-issue cot, with a body full of aches and head of frightful memories. Daylight poured in through a single, slanted window, illuminating black stone and the invading morning fog. She sat up, biting back a groan.

"Papa?"

Panic gripped her; she would come to terms with the events of the previous night, _the SS men,_ later. But her Papa...

Sat slumped in his wheelchair, head lolled to the side and mittens clinging just barely to the tips of his fingers.

Magda rushed to his side, taking his hands in her own, nearly dying from concern. The Scleroderma was destroying and aging his tissue, had been for years; turning tendons and ligaments into rusted bits that barely worked on their own anymore. He couldn't be exposed to the frigid temperatures of the Keep, not without losing a limb.

"Papa..." She trailed off, looking down to the soft, pliant, warm fingers she held. A chill snaked across her back. "My God, what happened?"

Theodore Cuza lifted his head, and a man twenty years younger, twenty years _healthier_ , stared back through glittering blue.

"What h-happened...your hands," She whispered, turning up to him in astonishment. "Your face!"

Her father pulled away from her, examining and feeling the undamaged skin, running both palms down his face.

 _His face, now pink and lively; blanched and stretched like leather just hours ago..._

"I feel warm," He said softly, but with pride and elation. A smile touched his lips, and he bent down to place a gentle kiss on Magda's forehead.

She didn't know how to think, or feel, or celebrate. She was _terrified._

Slowly, shakily, the professor's daughter brought the torn pieces of her blouse together, rubbed at her throbbing stomach.

"I know...it brought you here."

 _No, Papa, no, it wasn't real, God..._

"Who?" She replied breathlessly, a cry of terror clawing up her throat, and the memory of something _cold..._

The professor nodded, brow furrowed, excitement burning in his eyes like bonfires, and Magda felt her body sink.

"No, that was a dream! That was a nightmare!" She gasped, heart thrumming in her ears.

 _Papa, no..._

"It carried you here, I saw it, too!" He urged, grabbing ahold of her slight shoulders.

"What I saw wasn't real." Her voice was low and deadly serious, trying to convince him that whatever was happening-

"Look at my hands, look at my face! It touched my body!" He quieted, grew thoughtful. "Look at you." Magda peeked up from underneath a mess of curly bangs, not understanding, refusing to believe."I don't know what it is and I don't care. He is like a _hammer,_ and can help smash them-"

"What are you talking about?" Magda spat, anger heating her cheeks. "We're dealing with a Golem, a Devil!"

The professor pulled her close and whispered, "Now you listen to me, the Devil of the Keep has a black uniform and a Death's Head on his cap, and calls himself a Sturmbannführer!"

Father and daughter both grew silent as heavy boots echoed up the dark, narrow staircase that lead to their room. Magda looked to Captain Woermann and another soldier.

 _At the very least, they wore green._

The Captain went to say something and paused, looking over Magda with something akin to unease. His clear eyes were kind, however, and he _had_ promised to keep them safe.

"There were two more deaths last night. You are going to stay at the inn, you have two minutes to pack," He said to her, tone grievous. Magda stood up, but stayed close to her father.

"Why?"

"Because I can at least keep you safe from what is killing us, and after the incident in the mess...maybe from the men, too."

His words left her trembling.

"Maybe from the men...?" She repeated, the words heavy on her tongue. "I'm not going to leave my father here alone."

"Yes," The professor interrupted, "You should go."

 _Magda wasn't used to her father's new, smooth voice._

"No."

 _How could he say such a thing?_

"You now have a minute and forty-five seconds," Woermann said urgently. She assumed that the SS man, Kaempffer, was his superior and didn't know of his plans to send her away.

More boots neared the room, and the man himself appeared, a pitch leather greatcoat streaming behind him like the wrath of Hell. Magda felt herself become small, insignificant.

 _"The Major will snuff you out...like that." The captain's very words._

"A minute and forty-five seconds for what?" The man in black said through tight lips, harsh face angled towards Woermann.

"Fräulein Cuza is packing her things and moving herself-"

"She is not moving anywhere!" Kaempffer sneered.

"I forbid it, I will not permit you to send my daughter away!"

Magda looked to her father in disbelief. She felt like a mouse situated among lions, not knowing which way to run.

"You? You forbid?" Kaempffer hissed, piercing gaze fixed upon the Jewish professor, loathing more than evident. "Let me tell you something, you forbid nothing. Nothing!" He looked at Magda. "Get her out of here."

Then he was gone, and she was left to her packing and the deluge of confusing thoughts ripping through her sanity.

Her father manipulated Kaempffer, knew exactly what to say. The sick old Jew, tied to a wheelchair, who possessed more cunning than the men butchering their people.

 _But why did Papa want her gone? What had that abomination done to him?_

 _Why had it saved her from the Nazis?_


	3. Chapter 3

_Here is the trailer to the film, and if you'd like to watch it, message me for a link to a safe download!_ _watch?v=Jaw-UDdB9Hw_

* * *

 _"Meet a man. Live your life and you will live for me..."_

Her father's words were as barbed wire around her heart. Even just as she walked across the causeway, he began to fade into nothing but a memory.

Magda believed she would never see him alive again. Leaving him in that horrid, granite prison, filled with lesser known evils and otherwise...

Not even a full step beyond the threshold of the Keep, the air seemed lighter, more clean. But she knew that only a few paces behind her, something terrible beyond imagination stirred.

 _Black eyes, slack lips, a cloak of fog._

The flesh where it had touched her burned hot and cold; Magda's fingers tingled with the need to rub it away, but two sparsely filled travel bags hung from her fragile hands.

She didn't want to go to the inn, _nor_ did she want to stay in the Keep. Barely even a day ago, she'd dismissed what the Wehrmacht captain had told them; tales of violent death, of some specter in the night tearing out the throats of soldiers, disappearing without a trace, leaving them drained of blood.

 _A vampir._

Kaempffer had killed three villagers already, suspecting partisan activity. Suspicion was all a man like that needed to justify murder, and Magda didn't think the German's _Vampir_ was so different from the SS major.

She shivered, stopped to turn and face the Keep.

Immediately, her eye was drawn to a window, built in high above the treacherous ravine that cut into the mountain.

 _Someone was watching her. Just barely a silhouette, but one she knew, and it was no Vampir._

In that moment, Magda nearly dropped her bags and ran back, nearly risked a barrage of Nazi bullets to get her father out and away from the Keep, away from Romania.

Away from _it._

* * *

 _She would come back. For her father. Nothing that oozed such potent goodness, that glowed so bright, would give in so easily._

 _Now he waited, for the girl to come back, for the right moment to approach the ailing father. So much to do before his opponent arrived, for surely, he'd already begun his own journey to the Keep._

 _He watched her walk proudly across the causeway, and he commended her. Brave little thing, she was, and an irreplaceable commodity to gaining the old man's trust._

 _Beautiful, too; soft, sweet, moldable. He liked the way her round, dark eyes had looked up at him. Her despair was thrilling._

 _Something troubled him, however._

 _The girl was young and vulnerable, but no fool. She possessed some knowledge of his prison. Her father would be easy to sway, to use. He'd saved his daughter, and a debt was owed._

 _He had nothing to hold above her, aside from death._

 _"Magda, Magda," He whispered, and she whipped around to him, from more than a hundred feet below. "Come back soon, Magda..."_


End file.
